The Challenge... Week Three
Sorry for the delay in my post this week, it has been a little crazy...
Last week was a bit more challenging than I planned for. Just after my menu plan was done and the grocery shop was made my stove decided to display some fireworks! Of course, when my husband was away on business...my stove/oven were out of commission for the better part of a week. Luckily, I have wonderful neighbours who loaned me their toaster oven, and I also purchased a two-burner hot plate for cooking until my wonderful husband came home and got our stove/oven working (I am lucky as he can fix pretty much anything).
I don't think I remember ever using a hot plate before, and it would have to be back in my college years that I would have used a toaster oven. Honestly, they don't cook a lot of food at once.... It definitely takes patience. I did things in batches (as two bigger pans will not fit on a hot plate), ate a lot of sweet potato (which isn't too different from every other week as both my kids love sweet potato). I have to say the most interesting thing to cook on a hot plate is pancakes as the heat isn't distributed evenly... I botched the first attempt, then tried another recipe. In order to cook them, I needed to do one at a time in the middle of the pan, but the kids loved them so that is what counts :).
Due to our cooking challenges, we didn't follow the menu plan set out for the week completely. We ended up eating out a few times, and making what was easy (still used the food from the week). Due to the variations of the menu we had a lot of leftover food to eat so I haven't done my big grocery shop for the week as of yet. I did have a trip to Costco to pick up a few essentials, and was excited to see that organic chicken was 6 dollars off a package, so I picked up one of those. I also picked up organic frozen berries (cheapest price I've seen on frozen fruit, avocados, spinach). I also stocked up on sweet potatoes again as Freshco had them on sale for .68 cents a pound, so I priced matched them.
This is what I've bought for the week so far:
Organic Chicken 19.00
ground beef 11.00
sweet potato 6.00
avocados (12) 12.00
spinach 6.00
2 dozen eggs 6.00
frozen raspberries 12.00
frozen blueberries 9.00
10 lb bag of carrots 5.00
almond flour 16.00 - you can get a big bag of this at Costco, or a bag half the size at a standard grocery store for the same price.
Bananas - 2.00
Total 104.00
Saturday - We had sweet potato toast for breakfast and then went out for lunch. None of us were overly hungry for dinner, so we just had some roasted vegetables and my daughter ate her leftover chicken as well.
Sunday - We had eggs and an almond biscuit for breakfast. We had some more vegetables for lunch and a spinach salad. For dinner we used the ground beef and made a meatloaf, spinach salad and roasted sweet potatoes.
Monday - We had a berry smoothie for breakfast and the last almond biscuit. We had leftover meatloaf, sweet potato and spinach salad for lunch and almond-crusted chicken with broccoli, roasted carrots and spinach salad for dinner.
Tuesday - We had a berry smoothie with avocado for breakfast, sweet potato and leek soup for lunch, and leftovers for dinner (meatloaf, chicken, sweet potato, and cooked an acorn squash from last week.)
Wednesday - We had chia seeds with frozen berries for breakfast, sweet potato and leek soup for lunch, and one-pan paprika tofu and veggies for dinner.
Thursday - We are having simple banana pancakes for breakfast, one pan paprika tofu and veggies for lunch and lentil masala soup for dinner (might have to cook the rest of the carrots, acorn squash and some zucchini as well for the kids... not sure if they will like this soup).
Friday - We are going to have zesty lemon chia pudding for breakfast, lentil masala soup for lunch and almond-crusted chicken with beans (from last week), and roasted vegetables.